Paul Israël

Managing Director

My parents advised me not to join the Navy and see the world when I was 17 years old but I knew better and signed a 4-year contract to find out only two weeks later that my parents were right. However, I did sail all over the world and even went to Australia, Jeddah, Gibraltar, Singapore, Jakarta, as well as Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean. I had a great time. During my Navy years I started studying law. I transferred from the military to the civilian section of the Ministry of Defence and became responsible for recruitment (civilian staffing) and was later appointed as Head of the educational department.
After this period I made a career move to finally work as Partner / CEO for the advertising agency IPW / BBDO. The agency specialised in recruitment advertising and became the largest specialist agency in the Netherlands, with around 170 employees. Around 1995, the agency was sold to TMP Worldwide. TMP Worldwide was also a global company that introduced Monster.com: one of the first global internet brands to target recruitment through the internet.

After approximately 10 years I changed my career again and transitioned into content and Digital TV. First in The Netherlands (Mediakabel Rotterdam), but in the year 2000 I was asked to become responsible for content acquisition and strategy of Telenet in Belgium. It was mainly during the 12 years at Telenet that I was in the unique position of working with the best teams implementing all developments related to content and digital TV. This included HD, On Demand, OTT, Interactive TV, Mobile, etc. and building a worldwide network. A lot of experts today still consider Telenet as one of the most successful cable companies in the world.
After 12 years I decided that I needed a sabbatical. But after only a few weeks after leaving Telenet, I was tempted to immediately start my own consultancy firm by taking on a project. This was followed by many other projects, including becoming the representative for BBC in Benelux and VRT in the Netherlands. AreaMedia started growing and I was fortunate to be able to find new team members who helped me to build a new company.

Today there are 4 of us plus two interns. We work for clients in London, Brussels, Los Angeles, New York, Lisbon, Malta, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. So after more than 40 years, I have traded sailing the world for flying around the globe